Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 02 - Dead Ringer

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  Gladys smiled gratefully. “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, and added the lie, “My husband was real pleased with the way you did them last time.” Actually Richard hadn’t noticed my nails until I stuck them under his nose, but my getting a manicure would make Gladys feel better. Besides, if I sat in that chair any longer, I was going to take root.

  I let Gladys lead me to her table and get to work. “I suppose you want them painted clear again,” she said with a sigh, obviously remembering the last time I had been there.

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m feeling adventurous today. I got a teal blue dress for the party, so what color would you suggest?”

  Gladys immediately pulled forth a carousel of nail polish and started explaining the enormous benefits of each and every one. I wasn’t convinced that the color that I finally chose would make my eyes look like pools of mystery, but it didn’t look half bad.

  We were just getting started when Aunt Daphine came by to escort a customer to the door. “I don’t know why we didn’t try this hairstyle years ago, Mrs. Minton. It makes you look so much younger.”

  “Do you think so?” Mrs. Minton said, peering into the nearest mirror.

  “Absolutely. That style is just perfect for you. Your husband’s going to think that he’s got a brand new wife, and I can just imagine how that’s going to affect him.” Aunt Daphine actually giggled.

  Mrs. Minton’s eyes got wide, and she took a better look at the mirror. “Do you think?”

  Aunt Daphine nodded solemnly, and Mrs. Minton didn’t waste a second in getting out the door, and presumably, to her husband.

  “Your aunt has seemed a lot perkier the past couple of days,” Gladys said in a low voice.

  “She sure has,” I said, but I wasn’t entirely glad to see it. I mean, I was glad she was feeling better, but it made me nervous that she was so sure that Richard and I would be able to get her out of trouble.

  Gladys was just about done with my nails when Dorinda walked over with a copy of the Byerly Gazette. “Do you mind if I read your newspaper, Gladys?” she asked.

  “Go ahead,” Gladys said. “I’m done with it.”

  Dorinda turned a page, and said, “I don’t know why I bother to look at it. It never has anything in it worth reading.” She stopped on a page, and said, “Well, look at that.” Then she didn’t say anything.

  I knew that what she wanted was for either me or Gladys to ask her what it was she was looking at, but I couldn’t resist. “Anything exciting?” I finally asked.

  “Not much,” she said nonchalantly. “I was just looking at this picture of Daphine and her daughter.” She held it out where I could see it. It was one of Arthur’s campaign advertisements, designed to emphasize that Vasti and Arthur were authentic members of the Byerly community. “How much older than you is Vasti, anyway?” Dorinda asked.

  I tried not to grin, because I didn’t want to encourage her, but after all the times Vasti had reminded me that I was older than she was, I couldn’t help but be tickled. “Actually, Vasti is younger than I am.”

  “Is she? I guess it must be the dress she’s wearing. It makes her look older.”

  That made me think for a minute. Was she saying that Vasti dressed too old, or that I dressed too young? Or some combination of the two? “I think it’s a very nice dress,” was all I said.

  “Of course, if my husband looked that old, I’d try to dress differently too.”

  “Which one?” Gladys asked under her breath, and it wasn’t easy for me to keep from laughing. I could tell from the way Dorinda turned to the next page that she had heard the reference to her multiple spouses.

  “Well, look at that,” she said again.

  I should have known better, but I rose to the bait again. “What’s that?”

  She didn’t answer, and I realized she was really staring at the paper this time. “Dorinda?” I asked.

  She jerked her head up. “What?”

  Gladys asked, “What’s so interesting?”

  “Nothing,” she said too quickly. “Nothing at all.” She carefully folded the paper, and went back to her desk. I saw her stuff the paper into her pocketbook, and then she just sat there with the oddest expression on her face, like she was thinking real hard.

  “What was that about?” I asked Gladys.

  She shrugged and said, “With Dorinda, there’s no telling.” She finished painting the last nail, stuck my hands into the nail dryer, and went to clean her implements.

  I was itching to get a copy of the Gazette and see just what was it was that was so fascinating. I was pretty sure I knew what it was. Most of yesterday’s paper had been devoted to Leonard Cooper’s murder.

  “Laurie Anne,” Aunt Daphine called from the back of the shop. “I’m ready to fix your hair.”

  It was the first time that Aunt Daphine had cut my hair in years. She had done it when I was younger, but when I went away to school, I was convinced that any haircut I got in Boston had to be more sophisticated that what I could get in Byerly. Now I knew that I had misjudged Aunt Daphine, and I rather liked the result. It was still shoulder length with wisps of bangs, but the bangs looked styled now, rather than just pushed out of my face.

  This isn’t to say that I was paying such close attention to my hair that I neglected the gossip going past me. Now the ladies were speculating about Leonard Cooper’s murder.

  Most of them were betting that Cooper was an illegitimate son of Big Bill’s, and that he had come to town to claim his birthright. No one had a clear idea of the details involved, like how Big Bill had gotten some woman from Tennessee pregnant and how Cooper had found his way to Byerly and into the mill.

  As for the murderer, most folks were betting on Burt, out to protect his inheritance. Burt’s wife Dorcas was also suggested, for the same reason. Big Bill got a few votes for wanting to protect his reputation, although I couldn’t resist pointing out that he couldn’t have picked a more conspicuous place to kill somebody. There were a few other contenders, mostly pretty unlikely, including a faithful family retainer protecting the Walters and a mob hit for unspecified reasons.

  Hank’s article said that Cooper had been in Vietnam, and Gladys speculated on the reaction of Small Bill Walters if he had met Cooper there. Nobody mentioned the fact that Cooper had been in Vietnam with Small Bill. Obviously Junior had been able to keep that quiet so far, and I saw no reason to disturb the status quo.

  Still, it started me thinking about something I should have realized as soon as Junior talked to me. Admittedly, I had been concentrating on the idea of Uncle John Ward knowing Cooper, and not Small Bill, but now I realized what a strange coincidence it all was.

  Both Small Bill and Leonard Cooper had looked a lot like Big Bill. Therefore, Cooper had probably looked a lot like Small Bill when they served together in Vietnam. What were the chances of two men who looked so much alike being in the same outfit? If Cooper had been Small Bill’s illegitimate half–brother, the coincidence was even more remarkable.

  I just couldn’t buy that big a coincidence. So what did that leave me? Some unknown enemy wanted the two men to meet and somehow arranged to have them assigned to the same company. And then killed Small Bill so that all these years later, Leonard Cooper would take his place and run the mill. Only somebody killed him first.

  I snorted at the whole idea.

  “I beg your pardon,” Aunt Daphine said.

  “Nothing,” I said. ‘Nothing’ was right. The whole sequence of events was too foolish to even think about. I focused my attention on the conversations going on around me.

  As it turned out, I could have kept on creating imaginary plots. The conversation had left Leonard Cooper, and was now about some people I wasn’t interested in and their noisy marital problems.

  Aunt Daphine finished with my hair, and asked me, “Is there anything else we can do for you today?”

  I hesitated, not sure how to answer her. I hadn’t learned a whole lot yet, but I w
asn’t ready to give up. What excuse could I use for sticking around?

  Gladys saved us by asking, “Laura, have you ever had a facial? I just got this mix from England I’ve been itching to try,”

  “How long does it take?” I asked.

  “About an hour. Are you in a hurry?”

  Aunt Daphine and I smiled at one another. “No,” I said. “I’ve got all day.”

  While Gladys wrapped a hot towel around my cheeks and went to mix up whatever it is one uses for a facial, I kept an eye on Dorinda, hoping that she would leave her newspaper unattended long enough for me to sneak a peak. Unfortunately, just as Gladys returned with a bowl of what looked like oatmeal, Dorinda grabbed her purse and the paper and announced, “I’m going to lunch now. Would you listen for the phone, Gladys?”

  “Sure,” Gladys said, but Dorinda was already gone.

  So much for getting a look at Dorinda’s paper, but maybe I could find out more about Dorinda herself. “Does Dorinda always act like that?” I asked as Gladys removed the towel.

  “Pretty much,” Gladys said, and started smearing the oatmeal on my face. “Not at first, or Daphine wouldn’t have hired her, but as soon as she realized she could get away with it. Like I said the other day, I don’t know why your aunt puts up with her.”

  Of course, now I knew why Aunt Daphine hadn’t been concentrating on the shop, but I couldn’t tell Gladys that. “Why did she move to Byerly? She’s from South Carolina, isn’t she?”

  Gladys nodded. “From some town near Columbia. She just divorced her third husband, and he’s got a lot of friends and family around there, and they were just making her life miserable. Taking his side and all. So she said it was time to make a new start, and since she had a boyfriend in Byerly, this is where she came. Only when she got here, she found out that he’s married and hasn’t got any intention of leaving his wife. I was kind of surprised to hear that she cared whether or not he was married, to tell you the truth, but she says she did. Anyway, she decided that since both she and her daughter had found jobs, they might as well stick around.”

  I must have looked surprised at how much she knew, because Gladys grinned and said, “It sounds like I’ve been studying up on her, doesn’t it? She told me all of this the first week she was here. That woman could talk the hind leg off of a mule, and she’d much rather talk than work. You would think that a woman wouldn’t want to tell the whole world about her marital problems.”

  “Oh?” I tried to look interested, which I was, just not for the reason Gladys thought I was.

  “Don’t move your eyebrows so much,” Gladys said. “You’ve got to let this stuff set.”

  That made it sound suspiciously like concrete, but I tried not to move my lips as I asked, “Anything juicy?”

  Gladys set a white plastic timer for fifteen minutes, and said, “Would you believe that she started seeing her second husband while her first husband was in Vietnam? She said that he was fooling around on her over there, so she didn’t see any reason why she couldn’t do the same.”

  “How did she know?”

  “No more talking until the fifteen minutes are up.”

  I nodded.

  “She said he got drunk when he was home on leave, and confessed the whole thing. Now I’d be mad, too, and maybe I’d leave him, but I wouldn’t run out and have an affair.” Gladys lowered her voice to a whisper. “She’s not even sure which man was Joleen’s father.”

  I wanted to ask more about the man in Vietnam, get his name or something, but there were two reasons I couldn’t. For one, Gladys had asked me not to. For another, the facial had stiffened to the point where I wasn’t sure if I could. Gladys proceeded to tell me a whole lot more about Dorinda that I really wanted to know. Dorinda wasn’t the only one who could talk the hind leg off of a mule.

  Finally the fifteen minutes were up, and Gladys started to peel the stuff from my face. “Doesn’t that feel wonderful?” she asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said. It certainly was a relief, because I had started to worry about it not coming off, meaning that I would probably make the wrong impression at Vasti’s garden party.

  “Now I’ll go mix up the next part,” Gladys said. “You stay right here.”

  The phone rang while she was gone, and Clara McDonald came hurrying up to answer it. Her hair was still brown, but I thought she had added some highlights. After she had taken down an appointment and hung up the phone, she saw me and said, “Hey there, Laurie Anne. I didn’t realize that you were still here.”

  “Just trying out Gladys’s new facial.” I wanted to express my sympathy for the loss of her husband, but I wasn’t sure how to word it. Instead I just said, “I meant to tell you the other day. That really is a beautiful ring.”

  She looked down at her diamond for a second, then said, “It means a lot to me. Ed gave it to me, you know.” Then her eyes teared up, and she mumbled, “Excuse me. I’ve got to—” She walked quickly away without finishing the sentence.

  Rats, rats, rats! I had managed to say the exact wrong thing.

  “What’s the matter?” Gladys said, as she returned with a bottle of bright blue liquid.

  “Just sticking my foot in my mouth.” I explained as Gladys used cotton balls to apply the blue stuff.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “When a woman is in mourning, there’s no telling what will set her off.”

  That made me feel a little better, and we talked about other things while Gladys finished up with the facial.

  By the time I had attained a peaches–and–cream complexion, I was starved. I had hoped to talk to Aunt Daphine over lunch, but Gladys asked if she could come along and another one of the beauticians joined us. I didn’t even get to hear any more gossip, because we mostly talked about politics. The irony of it wasn’t lost on me. When I still lived in Byerly, I always fussed that no one wanted to talk about serious issues. Now that I wanted to hear gossip, I got commentary on the deficit.

  I looked for Dorinda when we got back, but Clara told Aunt Daphine that she had left for the day. “Female problems,” Clara said, with no expression on her face. That led Gladys to remark that Dorinda must have twice as many periods as anybody else, because she went home early because of cramps every two weeks.

  Her being gone killed my chance to look at her newspaper and confirm that she had been reading about Cooper, so I thought I might as well head back to Aunt Maggie’s. That is, until Gladys suggested a pedicure. I decided another hour or so wouldn’t hurt, but this time I insisted on clear polish.

  After that, I called Richard to come pick me up.

  Chapter 19

  Once I climbed into the car beside Richard and gave him a kiss, and he complimented me on my hairstyle, he asked, “What insights did the ladies of Byerly share with you today?”

  “I’ll tell you as soon as I get to a newspaper. You’ve still got that copy of yesterday’s Gazette, don’t you?”

  “Not with me, but it’s at the house.”

  “Good. When we look at it, we should be able to confirm my theory.”

  “And that theory is?”

  “That Dorinda is the blackmailer, just like I thought all along.” I told him how Dorinda had acted when looking at the newspaper, and concluded with, “She must be involved.”

  “I don’t quite see the connection,” he said mildly. “Dorinda looking at the paper proves that she’s a blackmailer?”

  “Well …” It did sound foolish when he put it that way. “That’s not all. Gladys told me that one of Dorinda’s ex–husbands served in Vietnam, so that could tie him in with Uncle John Ward and Leonard Cooper.”

  He nodded amiably. “Do you know for sure that he was in Vietnam at the same time as Uncle John Ward, and that they were in the same area?”

  “No,” I said reluctantly.

  “Did you find out his name?”

  “Gladys didn’t know. But don’t you think it fits? If Uncle John Ward told the ex–husband and Cooper, and the ex–hu
sband told Dorinda, then Cooper and Dorinda could have been in on it together. Hey! Maybe Cooper was Dorinda’s ex–husband.” Then reality stepped in. “No, Junior would have picked up on that. Still …”

  Richard wasn’t saying anything.

  “Just you wait until we get a look at the newspaper,” I said. “That will prove it.”

  He nodded again.

  “There’s something else I figured out.” I explained that Cooper and Small Bill must have looked alike. “Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

  “That is definitely odd,” he admitted. “If this were one of Shakespeare’s plays, we could do a lot with mistaken identities, but I don’t know how it fits in here. What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know.” My fanciful ideas about hidden enemies and arranged meetings were far too silly to talk about. Instead I changed the subject. “So what have you been doing?”

  “I accompanied Aunt Maggie on her rounds for most of the day.”

  “Really?” I had never thought of Richard as the type to enjoy scrounging around thrift stores. “Did you find anything interesting?”

  “I picked up a few books and such,” he said vaguely. “Mostly I just carried things for her. She’s still at it, but I figured you might be ready to come back, so I had her drop me off.”

  We got to Aunt Maggie’s then, and as I opened the car door, I had an awful thought. “Richard, you didn’t go back to that store where Aunt Maggie got her sneakers, did you?”

  “Well …”

  I ran around to the other side of the car, and my fears were confirmed. Richard was wearing hot pink high tops with purple tiger stripes, just like the pair Aunt Maggie had worn to the reunion.

  “Richard.”

  “They had been reduced to three dollars,” he said defensively, “and they’re very comfortable. They’ve even got arch supports.”

  I sighed. “You’re not going to wear them to work, are you?”

  “No,” he said in shocked tones. “They’d get ruined in no time.”

  I thanked the Lord for small favors.